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Downfall
Oliver Hirschbiegel's acclaimed drama charts the final, bunker-bound days of Adolf Hitler, as Berlin and the Third Reich crumbles around him. While the film courted some controversy upon release, facing charges of humanising a monster, the film was nevetheless a huge box office success and still ...
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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Legendary Hollywood director Sidney Lumet’s final film is as blistering as any young director’s. In desperate need of money, brothers Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke rob a ‘mom and pop’ jewelry store – only it belongs to their own mom and pop. Murder and time-tripping editing ensue; and Al...
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The Baby of Macon
In the 17th-century medieval court of Cosimo de Medici III, a group of players perform a production outlining an apparent virgin birth in the French town of Mâcon and the people who exploit this ‘miracle’ for their own gain. What follows is a damning indictment of corruption in all strata of...
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Her Last Affaire
Michael Powell's 'society drama’ involving suspicion, clandestine romance and presumed murder, and glorious comic double-act from Googie Withers and John Lurie.
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The Beast Must Die
This enjoyably unusual combination of Agatha Christie-style murder-mystery and gothic chills was the brainchild of Amicus Productions, Britain's chief rival to Hammer Films during the golden era of 1970s Anglo-horror. The film is best known for its gimmicky 'werewolf break' towards the end, where...
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The Night of the Party
Michael Powell’s fun stage adaptation about a murder at a society party, with characterful performances from its fine ensemble cast.
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Dreams That Money Can Buy
Dadaist Hans Richter attempts to bring the European avant-garde to the masses, with this story about a man who discovers he has the power to create dreams, and sets up a business selling them to others.
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Holy Motors
Traveling the Parisian streets by limousine, Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) is kept to a strict schedule of appointments by his driver (Edith Scob). Altering his physical appearance and identity as easily as another man might change his socks, Oscar makes contact with strangers, family members, bu...
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Stroszek
Werner Herzog's second film with lead actor Bruno S. (following The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser) was written specifically as a vehicle for the unusual performers rough-edged naivety. Having reneged on a promise to cast Bruno in the film Woyzeck (for which he was replaced by Klaus Kinski), Herzog wrot...
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Hotel Splendide
Music hall veteran Jerry Verno stars as a lowly clerk who gets more than he bargained for when he inherits a hotel, in Michael Powell's
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Magic
A productive collaboration with William Goldman as writer and Anthony Hopkins as actor results in an unusually small-canvas story - a thriller on the theme of the ventriloquist whose dummy becomes a lethal alter ego. Director Richard Attenborough described it as ‘A game of creating characters and...
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Inseminoid
In the far reaches of space, a team of intergalactic archaeologists find themselves in grave danger when an extra-terrestrial entity impregnates one of their crew members. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to Ridley Scott’s Alien, Norman J Warren’s wild sci-fi shocker is a glorious exercise...
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Zulu
A gutsy tale of grace under pressure, Zulu celebrates true British grit in the hour of need. Stanley Baker and Michael Caine lead a depleted contingent of Welsh infantrymen in defending Rorke's Drift missionary station from the attack of 4,000 Zulu warriors. Released in the final months of the Br...
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The Boys from Brazil
The Boys From Brazil is a terrifying film about the perpetuation of a new race of Hitlers, based on Ira Levin's thrilling book of the same title. In the setting of 1970s South America, a notorious Nazi War criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck), gathers a group of former Nazis to work on a co...
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Sweeney 2
Rough, tough Flying Squad officers Jack Regan (John Thaw) and George Carter (Dennis Waterman) are back, this time hunting a ruthless gang of bank robbers who use a gold-plated sawn-off shotgun during their raids. Following a trail of dead bodies, wrecked cars, and bundles of banknotes, the two de...
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The Ghoul
The Ghoul is an atmospheric slow-burn crime film more interested in psychology and the occult than in solving crimes. Tom Meeten’s detective Chris is called to investigate a mysterious, possible double murder. Discovering clues in the house of a shadowy suspect, he goes undercover as a patient to...
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The Appointment
Unable to attend his daughter’s violin recital, suburban father Ian (Edward Woodward, The Wicker Man) is haunted by a series of prophetic nightmares that seem to foresee a looming tragedy. Are dark forces gathering to be unleashed upon him?
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Under the Skin
Sexy, dark and ultimately uplifting, Carine Adler's stylish debut gave Samantha Morton her first major feature film role in 1997. In this intimate exploration of a young woman's relationship with her mother and sister, things are going badly for Iris (Samantha Morton); her mother (Rita Tushingham...
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Le Mépris
Based on Moravia’s novel, Jean-Luc Godard’s sardonic look at the world of filmmaking boasts superb performances by Michel Piccoli as a compromised writer, Brigitte Bardot as his bored wife, Jack Palance as a manipulative producer and Fritz Lang as himself, about to film Homer’s Odyssey in Cinecit...
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After Love
Joanna Scanlan earned her Bafta for leading actress for playing Mary Hussain, a Dover housewife who’s newly widowed and now baffled by the discovery of her late husband’s secret connection across the Channel, in Calais. Armed with just a bag and his mobile phone, she sets off to uncover the truth...
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Ran
Akira Kurosawa’s visually spectacular epic transplants Shakespeare’s King Lear from Celtic Britain to feudal Japan. In its epic scope and expert execution, Ran can be seen as a culmination of the great Japanese director’s filmmaking career; a late triumph which he planned and refined over several...
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The Lake
A chilling short ghost story in which a young couple go for a picnic beside a lake in the grounds of an empty house. Three years before, the owner had murdered all his family, killed his animals and disappeared. Director Lindsey C. Vickers independently funded the short as a showreel to garner in...
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The Tenth Victim
Marcello Mastroianni is the victim and Ursula Andress the hunter in Elio Petri’s sexy ‘60s sci-fi, which predates The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, et al, with its depiction of a televised assassination spectacle, The Big Hunt.